She waited to hang up the receiver before bursting into tears.
But in the evening, once her children returned, Nadia turned to them, a fake smile on her lips.
"My transplant is postponed," she only told them, hiding her immense disappointment.
It was March 16, the day before confinement, a phone call from his nephrologist in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne), and here is his renal transplant of April 1 canceled.
At the hospital, it was necessary to make room for patients with Covid-19.
"Ok, but when is it delayed?"
asks the farmer who raises 450 dairy ewes in Marin, a "very small village" in Aveyron.
The doctor told me:
I don't know,
and that's what was the hardest part.
No more date, no more projection, no healing on the horizon.
There she was.
Like the feeling of stumbling before the finish line.
And to think that she had even received an injection a month earlier in the hospital to lower her immunity and prevent her body from rejecting the future transplant.
“At that time, I said to myself, let's go!
"
"I was monitoring the number of cases on the news"
Caught in opposite feelings, between fear and relief, Nadia saw herself free from her home dialysis, freed from this machine, which filters toxins every night, during her sleep, that her kidneys can no longer eliminate.
On the other hand, there was this monster pressure to tame.
“The transplant had to work, I didn't want to disappoint my big brother”.
Him, "it is the lucky winner", jokes Nadia, with her singing accent.
The only one compatible with her for a kidney transplant among her uncles, aunt, husband, all ready to offer her a kidney and the chance to get out of it.
READ ALSO>
"Let's not forget our patients": the call of doctors for non-Covid patients
"I have a great family, eh," she laughs, barely a year earlier being diagnosed with Berger's disease.
Despite its name, the disease has no connection with its profession, but it destroys, little by little, its renal function.
"I felt tired, but when I was told that my kidneys were only 20% functioning, I was totally overwhelmed."
Very quickly, the treatments fail, we have to go on dialysis, which Nadia chooses at home rather than in a center.
“It's awful, from 9 pm, we're stuck in bed, impossible to go on weekends, on vacation.
Illness is something you impose on your family ”.
So despite the disappointed wait for her transplant, Nadia is reassured as much as she can.
At least she doesn't have to wait for a donor transplant, her brother takes care of it.
"I knew it would happen, because he would always be there," she repeats to herself, watching the TV for a break in the epidemic, in full containment.
But when ?
In six months, a year?
"I thought that, I was watching the news to see if the number of cases in real time decreased in Toulouse, telling myself,
maybe soon, a place will become available
".
And his turn has arrived.
"The impression of having won the Loto"
Shortly after the end of confinement, his hospital informed him: the transplants resumed in early June.
Then second phone call, that of deliverance, the operation is scheduled for July 8!
“I felt like I won the Loto,” she laughs.
It was party time at home ”.
After four hours of surgery and eleven days in hospital, Nadia returns to her village with a brand new kidney.
“It was harder and more tiring than I thought.
But, today, I am fishing, my brother too, I have almost resumed my previous life ”.
She has not, however, not forgotten the others, those who are waiting for a kidney, a heart, and lungs at a time when the Covid-19 epidemic is skyrocketing.
“I only had seven months of dialysis, people have been waiting for a kidney for seven years, they don't live, they survive”.
This time, warns the farmer, “I would no longer understand that we postpone transplants to favor the Covid.
We have to fight on both fronts ”.